Elliott Ronald Bull

Elliott Ronald Bull (1942–1979) was an Aboriginal Australian (of the Gunaikurnai people) artist who produced 2,000 works throughout his life. He is described by the Australian Dictionary of Biography as "a significant figure in the regional history of Aboriginal Australia".

Early life Bull was born at the Lake Tyers Mission in Victoria in 1942, but was immediately removed from his family by the state government, as part of the Stolen Generations. At age ten, he was sent to the Tally Ho Boys' Home in Burwood, outside of Melbourne. He had access to painting supplies and took up painting in his time there. Bull's formative experiences were in an era when Australian government policies focused on integrating Aboriginal people into a white Australian mainstream, while denying the legitimacy of Aboriginal people in their homeland.

The administrators at the boys' home recognized Bull's talent as an artist, and when he left at the age of fifteen, he was placed into foster care with a woman with connections to the art scene. As a result, Bull was in contact with painters Hans Heysen and Ernest Buckmaster, and studied informally under Buckmaster.

Figurative work His earliest work consisted of figurative art, but nearly all of these are now lost. These included works depicting Biblical figures as Aboriginal people. The sole extant work of this period is Bull's mural in Pentridge Prison. In 1962, a warden who knew of his artistic talents commissioned Bull, then an inmate at Pentridge, to paint a mural in a prison hallway that was being renovated. His mural depicted a scene from pre-European Australia, with three men at a campfire, carrying hunting weapons and a kangaroo. Hidden within the background are six kangaroo face formed by knots in the tree trunks and negative space.